Based on the retellings of survivor Nosaka Akiyuki and directed by Isao Takahata (co-founder, with Hayao Miyazaki, of Japan’s legendary Studio Ghibli,) Grave of the Fireflies is beautiful and has been universally hailed as an artistic and emotional tour de force.

As the Empire of the Sun crumbles upon itself and a rain of firebombs falls upon Japan, the final death march of a nation is echoed in millions of smaller tragedies. This is the story of Seita and his younger sister Setsuko, two children born at the wrong time, in the wrong place, and now cast adrift in a world that lacks not the care to shelter them, but simply the resources.

"For the Japanese filmmaker Isao Takahata, who died last year at the age of 82, the animated film was more than a vehicle for the whimsical and phantasmagoric, it was a platform for personal expression. While the same is certainly true for his friend and colleague Hayao Miyazaki, with whom Takahata co-founded the production house Studio Ghibli, Takahata pushed harder at accepted boundaries." —The New York Times